A drum washing machine is constructed so that a cylindrical basket-shaped drum is disposed inside an outer tub in a manner enabling it to rotate about a horizontal shaft or an inclined shaft, and laundry is accommodated in the drum and rotated in the outer tub storing water to tumble-wash the laundry. In such a general drum washing machine, a door for loading laundry is provided in a side-opening manner on the front face of a substantially rectangular outer casing, and when the door is opened, a laundry-loading opening provided at one end face of the drum is exposed through an opening provided in the outer tub.
One of the great complaints of typical consumers regarding such a drum washing machine is the difficulty in loading and taking out laundry. Namely, in the drum washing machine constructed as mentioned above, the laundry-loading opening is set at a low position, and the difficulty in loading laundry cannot be completely eliminated even by placing the washing machine on an exclusive placing base. In order to meet such a complaint, a drum washing machine in which a drum has a laundry-loading opening provided slightly diagonally upward has been conventionally commercially available. Furthermore, it has been attempted to make the laundry-loading opening as large as possible. However, for a consumer who has become used to the usability of a whirling washing machine, it cannot be necessarily said that the usability of the drum washing machine is satisfactory.
A possible method to improve such poor usability in the drum washing machine is to provide the laundry-loading opening at the top of the outer casing instead of the front face as in the case of the conventional general whirling washing machine. In a case where the laundry-loading opening is provided at the top of the outer casing, since it is required that an outer tub opening and a drum opening are provided at positions aligned with the loading opening, the openings are provided at the circumferential surfaces instead of the end faces of the outer tub and drum. However, although the position of the outer tab is fixed, the drum is rotatable in the outer tub, so that it is necessary that the drum stops at a rotational position at which the opening made in the drum is completely aligned with the opening made in the outer tub. Therefore, a mechanism which can securely and quickly fix the rotational position of the drum when the drum stops (“drum stopping position”) with a simple construction is demanded.